Well I mentioned this before but what I think that would truly help the community is have dedicated players to coach/help players who want to learn a specific character. I know people can go to youtube and come to shoryuken.com but there obviously are things that still can be picked up in real time watching others.
This could really be asking a lot for someone to do but if people truly had someone to go to it would be pretty instrumental. I know personally I am at that point where I need advanced help and techniques and just playing high caliber people doesnt help. It’s actually frustrating and almost as if I am learning the game all over again.
Agree with Zero1. Build the online scene and keep it motivated. That will even help promote more players to come out to tournaments seeing how they may interact with regular tourney players and might get hyped enough to go. Since Capcom is promoting SF4 as the next SF2, you can forget about the support HDR needs from them. It’s up to the HDR community to ensure that the game stays viable.
I’ve actually been drawn away from HDR and the WWL as of late for two reasons.
1.) Alot of crazy personal things have happened (Mostly good) that have taken my time away.
2.) I’ve been trying to put together how (and if) viable a large scale HDR focused tournament could be. Of course, I wouldn’t expect huge SF4 like numbers but would it be so crazy to host a tournament once a year that could get 150 entries for HDR if people had all year to plan? I don’t know… I’ve been running numbers, trying to figure out what kind of prize money might have to be involved, how many events, if there’s one great thing about Indianapolis, there’s about 7000 places to hold such an event, but then again, do HDR players (most of which, or at least many who clamor seem to be from the WC) want to travel to Indianapolis? (I mean it is an EXTREMELY underrated city and all… but it is hard to compete for obvious reasons…)
Evo already gets that many entrants. So, I think you’d need something else noteworthy to draw people in. I think one really cool idea would be to expand on the old-school theme. Have all the classic games there - Hyper Fighting, ST, Alpha 2/3, MvC2 or some other vs game, and maybe Killer Instinct or some version of MK. Basically a big old-schoolers event. Now, I this sounds cool to me in theory, but in reality the MWC is already pretty close to this.
As far as location goes, I think MWC is a good example again. At least for me. I love Chicago and really think about going every year, but I never seem to make it. And because so much happens on the west coast (Evo, Devastation, WCW, and other random events) I don’t ever really feel wrenched with sadness that I didn’t make it. Cause it’s not like I missed out on the one big event of the year. All in all, I think it would be more successful if it was held in major city on or near the west coast. My personal bias aside, the real draw for a lot of people to go to something like this would be to get to play those old-school games against the big name people like Valle, Choi, Watson, etc. If you make it easy for those guys to come out to an event like this, I think you’ll instantly make it much more hype.
Finally, consider that the old-school guys are notoriously picky. If someone really does hold something like this, be sure to do it up right. Contact those guys and make sure you get the right versions of those games to play. Alternatively, something like this could be held at a real arcade, like Denjin, for complete perfection.
My brother and I have actually thrown around the idea of hosting monthly HDR tournaments with a guaranteed pot. If these were successful we would eventually like to branch out and make them SF2 themed tournaments and include HF. We also thought about including Classic Mode via HDR, but who would actually show up for that…besides Watson? I’ve been on ggpo numerous times and it seems that a good percentage of the ST community is unwilling to even accept the possibility of playing on widescreen or new sprites.
That is one of the biggest factors that keeps me off tourneys.
It would be good to get a list of the make/break issues that either (1) got people who do tourneys to do them, or (2) people who don’t go think is why they don’t go.
Maybe having a deeper payout, bonus payout for best performance by character, matchup handicaps, non-elimination tourneys, etc.
This. At most tourneys, you have to pay $5 or $10 to enter (not including registration). IDK why it’s that low. I’d be willing to pay $20 even $30 to increase the maximum payout. I mean, if you’re gonna travel that far to enter a tourney, wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice payout if you win? Obviously it shouldn’t be higher than $30 just cuz too much money makes people lose their minds, and there will be more arguments and such. I’m just saying a slightly higher pot might entice a lot more players to enter the tourney.
“Deeper Payout” means that there is cash prizes for top placing players who did well but didn’t win.
You see this in tournaments like WSOP and Magic, where they often give payouts for placing in the top 10%.
So if they’d done that for Evo, then with 300 entrants they’d have paid out to the top 30 players.
You could even just do the top 8 get payouts, with the payouts being:
1st: 40%
2nd: 20%
3rd: 10%
4th: 10%
5th: 5%
6th: 5%
7th: 5%
8th: 5%
So if a tourney has 30 people paying $10 toward the prize pool, and it pays the top 8 at the % indicated, then you get:
1st: $120
2nd: $60
3rd: $30
4th: $30
5th: $15
6th: $15
7th: $15
8th: $15
If a tourney has 300 people paying $10 toward the prize pool, and it pays the top 8 at the % indicated, then you get:
1st: $1200
2nd: $600
3rd: $300
4th: $300
5th: $150
6th: $150
7th: $150
8th: $150
Deeper payouts have a number of good benefits.
It encourages more people to enter since they have a much better chance at “cashing” (winning some money)
It also places importance on top finishers who do well but don’t win. (in poker, “cashing” in tournaments is an achievement recognized as a sign of skill and it is a stat that is tracked)
You can even assign points to top 10% of finishers in each tournament that can be used to to compete for a “top players of the year” finish. (this encourages players to attend multiple tourney to grab points at each)
Deeper payouts can make sense in larger tourneys, but in the average 16-player tourney, it’s probably best to stick to top 3 payout, or it kind of becomes meaningless. For instance, I once got 3rd place in a 13 person tourney, and even the traditional top 3 payout meant that I got a whopping 13$ for my 10$ entry fee - any deeper than that and I would have been in the red for placing 3rd, heh. But for Evo and such, sure, I’d be in favor of deeper payouts.
About higher entry fees, it seems polarizing. People who think they really have a chance at the money tend to be all for it, while more casual guys tend to dislike it. I’ve seen many, many times some guys being on the fence at entering a tourney based on whether it would be 5$ or 10$ entry! Meanwhile I’d personally enter a HD Remix tourney that had a 100$ entry fee anytime.
Edit: Okay, with my example of 3rd place in a 13-person tourney and zaspacer’s example distributions, I guess I still wouldn’t be in the red, since the money is mostly taken off the champion’s prize. Then the champion of that tourney could get 52$, instead of the 70/20/10 distribution’s 91$. Hmm, I don’t know.
If you want to make a competition starter-friendly, it would probably also be better to use a format like swiss that gets weaker players more matches. 2&out is not a fun experience and doesn’t really help people get better.
About swiss, the good part of having weaker players play more matches is kind of offset by the bad part of having more matches at all. It takes more time, and time is often a luxury. I guess swiss can work in tournies with really few entrants.
So what I’m hearing is I should host a total old school tournament with HDR as the feature event with some HF love, some OG ST, some UMK3, a lil KI, maybe a little Alpha 3 and Third Strike thrown into the mix, DG already said he’s flying out to Indianapolis, and we should charge Thelo 70000.00 to enter the HDR tournament for the prize money… Sound good?
I think it would be nice if some of the top level players contributed more to the character strategy threads. I think Sirlin was defending how HDR Fei was better than ST Fei in the old Fei Long thread. But then someone asked him how to beat Boxer with Fei, and he said “I don’t know”.